“The ecstasy of drudgery” says Adam Sutherland, quoting Eric
Gill, with only a hint of the fanatic in his eyes. We are standing
in the hall of the Coniston Institutive in the Lake District and
Sutherland, Director of Grizedale Arts, is telling me what artists
can expect when they come on residency here. Over the past 15
years, Grizedale has become the most radical arts organisation in
the country. “Which is odd,” says a bemused Sutherland surveying
the craft-making workshop going on around him “because what we are
doing is actually very ordinary”. But then sometimes it takes an
extraordinary effort to be ordinary.

Grizedale Arts, as it is known today, began in 1999 when Adam
Sutherland was appointed the new director of a small arts
organisation based in the forest of Grizedale. It is now a research
and development agency for contemporary artists, running a
curatorial programme of community events and artist residencies.
Inspired by places like Dartington Hall in Totnes, which embraced
the philosopher Rabindranath Tagore’s ideals of progressive
education and rural reconstruction, and John Ruskin’s early
workers’ education movement, Grizedale promotes art that is useful
to society.

From the start Grizedale Arts caused controversy, splitting
locals into two camps, those who embraced its cultural democracy
and those who saw the organisation as cynically exploiting the
community. Sutherland, ever the belligerent optimist, devoured all
criticism, even going so far as to invite the inhabitants to decide
the fate of a much-hated public art work commissioned by Grizedale.
They did so with rueful pugnacity by burning it to the ground.

Its impact on the art world was also immediate. Grizedale
offered an alternative to the neo-liberalism dominating
contemporary art at the time and became a place of refuge for a
group of young, post-yBa artists who were at odds with the
prevailing climate. Artists like Olivia Plender, Nathaniel Mellors,
David Blandy and Bedwyr Williams. By 2004, when Alistair Hudson
joined as deputy director, Grizedale had become something of a
right-of-passage for socially engaged artists.

A kind of Grizedale aesthetic began to emerge, often involving
animal costumes, craft and subversion. Marcus Coates confronted
rural romanticism, literally head on, by attaching dead birds to
his skull in an attempt to excite the Sparrow Hawk population,
Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane started their Folk Archive*, Karen
Guthrie and Nina Pope won the Northern Art Prize for work made as
part of the Grizedale commission The 7 Samurai in which seven
artists traveled to work with a local community in Japan.

Then, five years ago, Grizedale stopped encouraging artists to
make art. They were still invited on residencies, but were expected
to dig in the garden, print tea towels for the honest shop or run
activities in the local village. What happened? Did Grizedale
become anti-art? “Not at all”, says Sutherland, “I think art can
change people’s lives, but for me creative success is the practical
application of an idea that is integrated into the everyday and
then sustained by a community inspiring involvement and
development”.

Grizedale’s fifteen years are currently being celebrated with an
exhibition in multiple venues across the Lake District called ‘The
Nuisance of Landscape’- a suitably truculent title for an
organisation that’s impossible to get to without a car. The
exhibition starts with a blurred photograph of Marcus Coates
crawling across a field in one of his many attempts to commune with
nature. I’ve always enjoyed Coates’ art, he does no harm, although
he invariably puts himself in potentially hazardous situations,
politically, physically and emotionally, yet everyone comes out
with their honour in tact, and as Grizedale’s longest serving
artist resident it is fitting he starts the show. There is also a
video of Sutherland describing the public burning by the local
community of the contentious piece by Roddy Thomson and Colin
Lowe.

A retrospective is a great way of testing the waters of
contemporary art, and what becomes apparent is how much of an
impact Grizedale has had on the British art world, not just for its
humour and DIY punk aesthetic, but its collective subversivism -
they even make a key cutting shack look political (we don’t do
Chubbs). But mostly I like the fact that Grizedale is a respite
home for art’s superannuated Trojans, those who have fallen foul of
contemporary cultural Imperialism. There’s a great film of Olivia
Plender earnestly attempting to rehabilitate the late Ken Russell
as an auteur while he barks on about tits and ass and John Ruskin
is celebrated for his progressive ideals, rather than his
pathological fear of pubes. In many ways, Russell and Ruskin are
good mascots for Grizedale. Both were uncompromising bastards who
spent much of their lives in conflict with the prevailing
orthodoxy.

As Sutherland says, “Why should the shit version win? Lets
reclaim a role in art; we will give back to people's lives what is
missing and it will act as a catalyst to get other disconnected
activities back into dialogue.” For those in the public arts
sector, crippled by cuts and directed by a deluded government into
approaching an utterly indifferent private sector for money,
Grizedale suggests there might just be another way.

* Jeremy and Alan's Folk Archive definitely didn't start at
Grizedale although they did come to stay during the collecting
phase and decided that any local folk art was tainted by the
proximity of so many artists so consequently inadmissible.

Our sadly deceased hens (stoats, foxes and badgers did well
this year) , in the orchard, 2014

It's been a splendid gardening year here at Lawson Park. True to
our contrary form we seem to have had much of the opposite of the
narkiest weather suffered elsewhere in the country - very early
2014 saw horrific rain and floods most places but here, though it
was a very mild winter here too, with lots of early spring growth
in bulbs and shrubs (spring usually being late April / early May
here). I planted onion sets on the
Paddies in very early March for a change - Red
Baron and Sturon mainly - and panicked
when a frost followed that night. But no harm done, in fact we had
a bumper year for onions, which often get mouldy from late summer
rain here - but the excellent summer ripened them really well.

Blueberries were netted against birds in time this year - hurrah
- and at the time of writing (late Nov) we are still harvesting
autumn raspberry Joan J !! But oddly not a great
year for our usually reliable currants - we have an annual sawfly
on many redcurrants that needs prompt biological control (we
usually don't notice till too late) and somehow the blackcurrants
set less flower than usual - a freaky late frost, or bird damage?
Literally wheelbarrow loads of strawberries this summer - mostly
Mara de Bois cultivar.

Apples in the young orchard had a good year based on the ripe
wood of 2013's good summer - lots of fruit on 5 year old espalier
Lord Derby apple (trained on the house) and in the
open orchard heavy yield on local Keswick Codlin, and on
Hawthornden and Monarch amongst others apples. The lovely blossom
that appeared on the East European pear Humbug didn't set, and nor
did the Serbian quince - so this winter we plant anothert quince to
try and shift the pollination along a bit.

In the upper Paddies polytunnel (blown away in the last few
weeks for a second time :-() we enjoyed purple broccoli
Rudolph all the way till April, and a few
Aquadulce Claudia broadbeans yielded early and
were worthwhile too under cover. Overwintering pea 'meteor'
vanished though. in the larger lower tunnel we had great perpetual
spinach all winter long and good flat leaf parsely and salad
mustards too. In summer in the tunnel, decent Japanese pumpkins,
late cucumbers and some good sweetcorn all fared better than our
always reluctant tomatoes.

Elsewhere we had great success with yellow beetroots - with
their delicious leaves too - though we don't find them as tasty as
the red. Our bulb fennel bolted but I found pickling the bolted
stems fast stops them being wasted. Our kohl rabi was not great
this year - very slug friendly - but swedes and green broccoli (the
latter a lesson in not yanking out a miserable looking plant too
fast) both thrived despite plenty of slug and caterpillar
attacks.

Coming up trumps for flavour has to be lettuce 'Reine des
Glaces', and our swiss chard, with leeks a close second - all still
harvesting right now in November!

Alistair in the Office

Alistair Hudson talking with Chto Delat and MA Fine Art Students
from Liverpool John Moores University

On the 8th of November Grizedale’s ‘Office of Useuful
Art’ (or OUA) opened at Tate Liverpool as part of the show
‘Art
Turning Left: How Values Changed Making 1789–2013’. This was
the first of several on-going manifestations that the OUA will have
over the next few years. As Alistair describes “The Office is part
classroom part propaganda machine for the idea of Useful Art,
recruiting for the Useful Art
Association and working in parallel to the
Museum of Arte Util at the Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven where we
will also be press ganging people into Useology from December
7th”. As such, the OUA at Tate Liverpool provided a
complex, multi-purpose space in which ideas could be discussed and
plans for futures could begin to be hatched and materialized. As
well as providing an open drop-in space for visitors to the ‘Art
Turning Left Show’, the OUA also provided a bookable space for
anybody to hold discussions, talks, interventions or re-thinks
about the show and/or the possible use of art.

The OUA at Tate Liverpool also provided a very successful model
for integrating students within the infrastructure of a live show.
Around 25 undergraduate BA (Hons) Fine Art students from my
University (Liverpool John Moores) signed up to work in the office
and to recruit exhibition visitors to the Useful Art Association.
Also, a group of my MA Fine Art students have become very
interested in how the OUA attempts to work and rethink the
conventional gallery/museum space as a site for information,
intervention and exchange.

We also used the OUA as a location for a first meeting of the
L’Internationale Mediation group who will be develop a series of
seminars, interventions, discussions, publications and
collaborations with us over the course of the ‘Uses of Art’ project
(which will run for the next 5 years). The OUA itself, as an
ongoing, developing, changing, mutating phenomena will also act as
one of the key examples of how we can begin to rethink the role and
relationship between art, education and use.

Although we are only beginning to look back at the impact,
successes and pitfalls of the OUA’s first manifestation (as it will
soon be travelling to different locations, in different guises, and
working in different ways) it has already acted as a real means to
think through complex and overlapping issues surrounding the
production, distribution and reception of art. Rather than acting
as a simple ‘information point’ – by which visitors to the
exhibition could re-affirm their experience of the show by
accessing the official ‘rationale’ or have the show ‘explained to
them’ in ‘layman’s terms’ – the first iteration of the OUA has
acted as a real space in which ideas of education and the
production of meaning began to happen within a traditional galley
space. As different people, from a wide variety of backgrounds,
began to use and re-use the propositions found in Art Turning Left
both the show, and the Office of Useful Art, began to act as a
toolkit for producing new meanings. As Steven Wright argues in his
recent book ‘Towards a Lexicon of Usership’ (which can be
downloaded at the online Museum Of Arte Útil) we,
passive spectatorship is currently being replaced by active
usership. This, in turn, enables a more radical re-think of how
institutions can begin to re-think or re-invent themselves as civic
institutions for the production of knowledge.

The link between the OUA at Tate Liverpool and the simultaneous
presence of Grizedale Arts at Van Abbemuseum’s ‘Museum of Useful
Art’ show is crucial here. This has also begun to offer ways of
thinking through different kinds of simultaneous usership, in
different locations, and across different timescales – offering a
way of beginning to think of alternative and overlapping
temporalities (of uses and re-uses of histories and imagined
futures, as well as contemporary materials that are ready to hand,
which overlap and replay themselves as non-linear possibility).
This also offers an opportunity for us to re-purpose and to
revivify the role and function of the art institution (be it
museum, gallery, education or production based) as a collaborative
maker of histories and futures, one that relies on its users to
help produce and reproduces an active civic role.

I'll gloss over the fact it's been 10 months since the last
update here - suffice to say spring 2013 eventually came and a
shockingly warm and consistent early summer came after that - our
first decent growing season for veg in years.

We had successful garlic, celery, onions, brassicas, salads,
runner and broad beans, peas, spinach, fennel, chinese cabbage and
all sort of asian greens. Hell the soil even dried out enough for
us to discover how hoeing can actually work even here. As usual our
currants were wonderful and new raspberries 'Joan J'
established and fruited well in the Paddies. Our new very big
polytunnel gave us lots of cucumbers, courgettes and gherkins
though even the decent sunshine didnt really help our rather meagre
tomato harvest along.

We did get caught out by our inexperience with having fully
grown crops to deal with mid summer! We left our lovely onions out
too long and late summer damp meant they didn't store well for us.
And for the first time our blueberry crop was devastated by birds,
we usually find they ignore them.

Our planning for winter into 2014 under plastic really worked
this year - by making polytunnel space in September we have small
winter salads, broccoli, endive and beefy perpetual spinach to
enjoy now in the depths of winter.

bookends

(I move from Korea to Japan to work with artists Fernando Garcia
Dory on his farming and food project in Maebashi – it is kind of
meant to be a holiday)

As with Seoul, Maebashi is a city of almost completely renewed
buildings, both flatten by war and the drive to modernity - looking
out over these places I feel a sense of tragedy, grief really, the
odd tear has fallen on several occasions (quite incomprehensible
really, always when I am on the 23rd floor or so) over
the ‘sublime’ in the extreme urbanscape, a kind of combination of
wonder and horror, a ‘what have we done’ feeling – the
extraordinary human endeavour, the sense of what is underneath –
not only the landscape but a former built environment, in effect
the place. The character the cities have is now more of a
geographical position than a visible history or culture – they
could almost be any place, any person’s home. The few ‘natural’
elements are hardly there, in Maebashi the river can perhaps offer
a little solace – not really sure why a river would do that but
somehow it does – all that flowing on and on stuff it’s always
getting up to.

I noticed that Seoul has been voted 3rd worst city in the world,
that does seem somewhat upside down – it is surely one of the best
cities in the world, very efficient, energising, interesting,
varied, law abiding, big. I guess the downsides are the
phenomenally built up quality, but even that is majestic,
awe-inspiring.

5 days in a window less, equipment free, ex pizza kitchen in a
mental health day centre is one experience of Japan that I might
not repeat in a hurry. The last day – a holiday - was however a
delight and flowed smoothly from dawn to dusk starting with a visit
to an exquisite house and garden in the Maebashi suburbs. The key
feature and centres piece to the stroll garden being the large open
expanse of dry stream bed acting as a stone garden in the dryer
months and a shallow pond in the wetter ones – really inspiring.
All the usual elements of the stroll and water, rock and inner
gardens including the usual buildings, tea house, viewing platform
– the no nails building design certainly inspired me again - Lawson
park get ready to get your freak on and this time it’s going to be
sharp.

This visit was quickly followed by a work-wear shopping trip in
the utterly vast agricultural store – a place where you can by a
bridge large enough to drive over. Picked up a set of working
clothes all pockets and padding to add to the LP work wear of the
world collection. We then headed out to Airko sacred mountain but
while stopping for petrol noticed an abundance of pots outside a
house – turned out to be an absolute treasure trove of amazing folk
art and other antiques run be a lovely old couple who made us
coffee and gave us rather good deals on our somewhat paltry buys. I
bought a tight collection of red lacquer wares Fernando somewhat
randomly bought a child’s kimono and a paper mache fox – I think
this may say something about our respective characters, and why the
previous 5 days had been such a struggle. He’s a freewheeling
charmer and I am an uptight delivery freak.

From there our artist friend and guide Hiro Masuda drove us to
the top of the sacred mountain and as we climbed the leaves of the
- incredibly diverse range of trees - changed – autumn was about
half way down the mountain and blow me if it wasn’t the E word
again and this time in spades, or rather maple, acer, sycamour,
birch and very many others.

Next stop was a pig farm and sausage producer followed by tea
with a teacher of the tea ceremony providing me with a close look
at her superb collection of tea bowls and their exquisite multiple
boxes, each more E than the last. The extraordinary attention to
detail involved in the ceremony is kind of nuts – like a really OCD
obsession, the angle of the light, the crawl of the raku glaze, the
bump in the foot of the bowl, the finger marks left by the potter –
all have names and are to be paid attention to. It was a
fascinating insight into a disturbing obsessive world – Fernando
was transfixed – so alien for him, for me, I would be there if I
took off the restrainers – so more like fear in my case.

Seoul’s Hermes store is a thing of extreme and slightly
sickening perfection, from the white leather upholstered stair rail
to the exquisite window mastic. The function of the building is
unfathomable – 5 floors of taste and quality, populated only by
staff, selling saddle soap, bridles, saddle blankets and of course
their incomprehensibly expensive scarves – but whatever these cost
it does not add up to this kind of operation.

Again this curious notion of authenticity – that is the nebulous
currency that compels people to buy directly from Hermes. I was
told many years ago about a retail experiment in a Tokyo department
store (I was told this in a pub so almost certainly fiction). 2
lots of exact same Vuitton bags were laid out in the store one lot
were priced at half the real cost – the full-price bags sold
quickly, not one half-priced bag sold.

This trip took in the hyper rich quarter of Seoul, the Samsung
art museum with its 3 – so famous you think they must be dead –
architects. The auction house where the ‘experts’ verify the
authenticity of objects and one of the most exquisite galleries,
the Horim Museum, the result of one man’s obsession with Korean
folk art. There is a curious schism in the galleries – the objects
are mostly simple functional items, components of normal life –
albeit a normality that is now hard to imagine in terms of
aesthetic quality – this is set against the most luxurious of
galleries, I suspect if I was an archivist I would be off the
ground in transcendent ecstasy at the ‘conditions’. Conditions very
far removed from ‘normal’ life – it seems an odd choice. However
the objects are inspiring, a kind of Korean version of the Mengei
museum and all the ideas behind that.

I arrived with an idea of what we could do with the project,
that has inevitably shifted a fair bit – partly due to the wonders,
partly the unexpected and not least the scale of Liam’s structure
and the nigh on impossibility of moving it.

3 Comments

It would seem a little churlish to deride Hermes for creating a market place that you can only dream of.
I presume that there operation works by a process of design, manufacture and retailing. Strip out the charitable status, arts council funding, donations etc it sort of leaves you in a similar position.
This comment omits a lot of detail and in itself may appear a little harsh.

Welcome to my fragile world

A ceramics biennale

Toya, Toya, Toya, (pottery, pottery, pottery) sing the chipmunk
choir – the soundtrack to your visit to the Incheon Ceramics
biennale, a place where everything is made of pottery – some might
say a dream come true but even as a devoted lover of clay it was
too much for me – too expanding the form, too much art, too many
people declaring pottery is art – mainly ‘here’s something that
looks like contemporary art that I made in clay’. In a way the joy
of pottery is it’s building block quality, it’s integration in the
ordinary – not it’s desire to fly. Of course clay is possibly the
most versatile of any medium, from high performance engine,
cladding for a space rocket and the always sharp knife, to the
coprophilic splogs and splats of self expression.

The pottery biennale along with many other things has made me
think again about the perception of authenticity – a long
historical and contemporary exchange between east and west, from
the pottery of the 16th century to the prints of the
19th century and the commerce of the contemporary.
Everywhere I see copies of contemporary design, in itself retro
design – copies of things that are themselves copies of other
things – but somewhere in this endless exchange someone claims
authorship and copy right (usually a photographer). Perhaps the
most perplexing copy is the copy of the up-cycled look, the faking
of recycled materials.

There is an interesting alternative in Korean pottery, there are
master potters that make pots in the traditional style,
15th century style, these pots sell for £40,000 as much
if not more than the ‘originals’. They are perfect versions, they
are made with the same materials the same technology and the same
craft skill and by people who are part of a living link - no
changes, no stepping outside of the form.

When the western potter then copies this style – slavishly
reproducing all the authentic details the result is of a high value
but nowhere near as high as the Korean potters, the western potter
adopts their own kind of other authenticity, when that is then
reproduced it again drops in value. I suppose the issue is when the
production techniques change and the same items become factory
produced of less individual resonance, but probably better
technical quality. Differences that the majority of people will not
notice, and arguably why should anyone care. The difference between
a good and great bottle of wine – largely symbolic for the majority
of people. The symbolic and votive significance become
paramount.

You can tie yourself quickly into a tight knot thinking about
this stuff.

When Bernard Leach was heavily forged by the pottery class
inmates of Wormwood Scrubs prison the bottom dropped out of the
Leach market – the prisoners work was terrible all they really
copied was the stamp.

In the north of Seoul is a small village area of winding streets
and exquisite crafts. I visited the Folk art museum guided by Jina
from APAP who translated and guided me through the complexities of
the travel and food and all the rest – amazing to be so well
hosted, so much more productive and you get the sense that you are
perhaps actually valued, that something worthwhile is actually
expected of you – so many residencies give the impression they just
wish you weren’t there even though you are only there because they
invited you. Anyway Jina (middle name Patience – no really)
answered my millions of disparate questions tirelessly including
the translation of 5 moral tales illustrated in a screen at the
museum – it seemed to be telling stories similar to ones my uncle
used to tell of his adventures - two brothers, one went to fight in
a war, he died, the other brother had a sandwich – the end – it was
quite hard to work out the moral messages.

The whole area is full of craft and making at all levels – it is
also full of large groups of Chinese tourists who do somewhat
destroy the bucolic calm of a solo visit to the chicken museum or
the knot making school – other than that - what a place to
live.

The evening we visit a retro music cellar, all 70’s design and
music – it is founded and run by an artist/dj and is becoming
increasingly popular for a mainstream audience. On a random note
Jin tells me that until quite recently all album releases were
legally obliged to have a health song on them, a positive
educational message – that could be a great compilation series –
from the west the plethora of positive songs in the James Brown
catalogue spring to mind – well they would would’nt they that’s the
sort of nonsense my mind is filled with. Trying to find out a bit
more on K-pop and the musical heritage - although American
influenced from the war period music seems to be largely Korean,
albeit fusion. Korean pysch soul is well known in the esoteric
circles of muso land but what did it mean? I found a film based on
a group called the Devils that seems to suggested the Korean
president blamed the loss of the Vietnam war on pych soul!! and the
group were imprisoned and tortured before making a post-military
comeback – the music seems largely to be pretty pedestrian soul
cover versions – a Korean Blues Brothers albeit the blues brothers
were sadly never tortured before after or during the film -
although Beluchi did do himself some damage by all accounts.

Next issue

Second hand Seoul (ok that will be the only soul pun) and
Pottery biennale - bet you cant wait

Scale model for a Social Structure - Liam Gillick

All the usual fun of the long flight – 10 hours + the children
exploring the rhythmic stylings of Stomp using the clack of the
seatbelt, the crash of the table and the sickening guillotine jolt
of the arm rest, while dad texts. My seat enemy seemed to have to
urgently leave her seat minutes after the meal has been laid out –
really extremely awkward to pick all that stuff up and move, and
the most unpleasant of all flight phenomena the toe massage – from
my rear seat enemy – a girl absolutely determined to explore the
full potential of her seat’s capacity for alternative function and
the back of my chair for some complex foot work.

The film selection was a bit of a struggle, I was delight to
note the Fast and Furious has reach 6 – actually might watch that
on the way back, heard it was so beyond reason it had started to
get good and Vim Diesel is always a jaw dropping watch – what’s
with the ‘I’ve got a blocked nose’ diction. Did watch ‘The Intern’
a rom-com with the Vaughn/Wilson jerk-a-thon formulae - those guys
really have got the portrait of unutterable tossers off to
perfection. The Wilson seduction scene always a must watch for
shear wincing agony.

Incheon airport is a groovy super breeze, and the relaxed coach
ride into Anyang a pleasant sojourn through the combination of high
rise, flyovers and spectacular landscape that is a familiar style
in Asia – made more comfortable by not having the burden of a
suitcase – erroneously left on some tarmac somewhere.

Met by Jin and Jina from APAP - and taken on a tour of the
art works of the public art programme – a series of YBa period
works in the new city, Gillick, Gary Webb et al. All looking a bit
down in the ears, and kind of irrelevant in what is a kind of
difficult context – the other part of the programme is closer to a
sculpture park in a rural setting, much like a contemporary version
of old Grizedale – mostly large scale sculptures in the
landscape.

Both programmes driven by slightly different visions coming from
the city government – the principle ambition being to do with
status and city brand – to raise the ‘cosmopolitan’ factor. Also to
attract tourists – despite that seemingly absurd notion.

The programme has to make decisions about various works in need
of conservation or re sighting, difficult things to agree to spend
money on and big money at that – big sculpture, big money.

It would seem a good idea to try to make some of these art
works, actually work, take on some kind of function other than
mildly pissing off the local population. Some are conceived as
‘social spaces’ particularly the architectural ones. However most
have some ‘reason’ they cannot be used, often something like power
or water supply, or impractical materials – which ends up meaning
that they are all in effect symbolic. We are looking at moving Liam
Gillick’s sculpture, ‘a scale model for a social sructure’ it seems
logical to make it function for a community in some form.

And that’s where the problems start - this is a big thing, built
to stay put, although looking structural it isn’t in many ways. So
using it as structure for a further components is a bit
problematic. The cost of moving it and re construction really means
that you are principally trying to preserve a Gillick art work -
that becomes the financially dominant aspect. It kind of becomes
some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario where once extremely
valuable things are used as components in mundane activities, kind
of like cutting up the tyres of a lorry to make cheap shoes or
using a Durer drawing as a men’s room pin up or some impressionist
paintings as a floor covering (all real examples). So Liam’s
million pound sculpture can be a sign-post and a support for an
honest shop.

All UK gardeners stand with bated breath at this time of year,
but this Spring is a marked contrast to the last few here, where
really warm days and droughts have not been uncommon. Though the
rest of the country probably notices this year's very cold spring
much more than we do here - where the growing season always starts
late and finishes early - the last few days of warmth have been the
first to break the unremittingly cold and snowy last few
months.

Teensy green hawthorn leaves are beginning to unfurl in hedges,
and our cherry plums, tough as boots, are just starting to flower
(usually this happens mid / late March). The daffodil we have here,
'February Gold' (clue as to what it should do is in the name) has
just opened its blooms, mid April.

The advantage of all this cold is that we can keep planting
bare-rooted trees, a job we are way behind with, and start this
season's big border clear up and mulch, which has usually all
happened by now. So the suspended Sprin is a bit of a blessing for
the disorganised like me :-)

Alistair Appears Via Future Link to Liverpool!

Alistair Appears on Back to the Future Skype

I probably need to begin with an apology… maybe two? First of
all, this is the first JR memorial blog entry from me for well over
a year – I don’t know where the time has gone, other than saying
that the world has gone quite mad and, like everybody else, I’ve
been busy trying to stave off the forces of terminal
instrumentalization. Second, and far worse, this blog entry isn’t
about DeLorean cars, flying skate boards, sleeveless bubble jackets
or the consequences of calling McFly ‘chicken’ (though it has to be
said, big JR would have made a good stand in for mad professor type
person Dr. Emmett L. Brown). But this is about time machines – or,
more accurately, Mechanics Institutes as they were once called. Yes
folks, the good folk up at Grizedale have done it again. Just as we
thought we didn’t have an appropriate metaphor to think through the
process of ‘thinking ourselves otherwise’, up pop Adam, Alistair
and Co with a reminder to look in front of our own eyes. And in my
case into the history of the very institution I work in/for.

As you probably all know by now, Grizedale took the ‘Colosseum
of the Consumed’ to Frieze Art Fair last October. During this
multi-media, multi-project, multi-faith fandango, Alistair found
time to communicate to us (at The Autonomy School in Liverpool) via
the new fangled technology of Skype (something McFly and co could
only have dreamed of in their Back to the Future II world of 1989).
During this conversation, Alistair began to elaborate on various
developments in Grizedale Art’s ongoing project. Most importantly,
he invited us to imagine a bell curve of Social and Industrial
assent and decline – beginning with the late Enlightenment/First
Industrial Revolution and ending in our present economic chaos. If
we were to draw an imaginary line back across this bell curve, from
our present point in time, Hudson argued that we would find
ourselves somewhere around the beginning of the 19th
Century – a time in which Europe was beginning to re-define itself
along the lines of democracy, emancipation and extended social
inclusion. This period probably reached its ideological apogee in
the revolutionary year of 1848 and laid the foundations for the
ideas of citizenship and cultural value that we are currently
clinging on to (and re-defiling) today. Amongst this hubbub of this
activity was, of course, the growth of the Mechanics Institute –
those utopian expressions of social progressivism funded by
self-elected (and usually liberal minded) pillars of society.
Amongst this list of alumni was, of course, our own big JR who
kindly funded developments in the rural/industrial village of
Coniston.

What is important here for Hudson and the crew of the good ship
Grizedale was JR’s insistence on teaching art as part of an
extensive and integrated education – making it part of a syllabus
that would also include literature, the sciences and the
acquisition of everyday practical skills. Not only did this kind of
syllabus lead to the Mechanics Institutes becoming crucibles of
self-organisation and social change (centres of early union
activity as well as the foundations for many of our current UK
Universities), it also remind us of a time when art was also
ascribed a socially integrated use value. For Hudson, ‘the current
state of art galleries and museums is still determined by the
framework marked out by economic and truth values; where value is
ascribed to works of art based upon their operation within a market
system and their perceived ability to reveal or lead us to seeing
the world as it really is. In this scheme (from around 1848
onwards) the third value of art, based upon its utility or usage,
has been largely suppressed, or diverted into the arena of craft,
activism, politics and so on’. Re-inventing use value as the
crucial third term (against the accepted mode ‘dual mode of
advocacy of and advocacy’ – displaying works of art according to a
consensus of what constitutes a work of value [as commodities in
both monetary and aesthetic terms] and then advocating this value
to the museum or gallery’s constituency) then becomes crucial. It
becomes the cornerstone for beginning to re-imagine a more
permeable and open form of arts institution – one not bound by its
physical and geographical manifestation or legislation.

In its humble way, the time machine of big JR’s Mechanics
Institute at Coniston begins to open up this possibility, the
possibility for re-imagining a socially re-integrated art
production which forms part of our productive identity and
collaborative notions of citizenship, individual civil rights and
access to what we have left of community. Such a time machine also
gives us the opportunity to look back to the future, to re-assess
the roots of our culture, to sift through what was kept in and what
was thrown away in the processes of epistemological construct that
were (and still are) our inherited Modernity.

So! In our next issue of the Big JR Blog more on Time Machines -
and a big thank you here to discussions with Francesco Manacorda,
Director or Liverpool Tate, whose own (and far more elegant) use of
the ‘Time Machine’ as curatorial device put me in mind of McFly and
Co (and also, if I’m honest, made me begin to re-think the Machines
and Machinic illogics/counterlogics of Guattari’s ‘Chaosmosis’).
Maybe also something more on permeable institutions? Oh, and we
probably need to start a reconsideration of craft at some point I
would have thought? Until then may all of your Ruskin beards be
trim, may all of your bushy sideburns stay hearty (in a non-gender
specific metaphorical way of course), and may your Workers Soup
remain forever on low simmer.

Open Pamphlet Call for Radical Aesthetics event
organised by Loughborough University at The People's History
Museum:

Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer

A RadicalAesthetics/RadicalArt (RaRa) event

People’s History Museum,
Manchester,

FRIDAY June 14th 2013

Call for Participation

The RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt(RaRa) project invites artists and
scholars to prepare and submit a pamphlet for presentation at a
one-day event, Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer.
Instead of the traditional ‘paper’, submissions must essentially be
for or against something – in essence a protest.
The form that the protest takes is open to interpretation, for
example print, paper, images, video, performance, public
intervention. We invite you to address the idea and format of your
provocation/declaration as imaginatively and radically as you
wish.

How have artists used the trope of the radical pamphlet? How
might it be utilized as a format?

Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer will explore
the history and relevance of the pamphlet for contemporary art
practice through presentations by speakers and performers.
The one-day event will coincide with a small display of
selected pamphlets from the PHM collection (curated by the
RaRa organisers) together with a
selection from our ‘call for pamphlets’. See below for more
information.

It is written because there is something that one wants to say
now, and one believes there is no other way of getting a hearing.
Pamphlets may turn on points of ethics or theology but they always
have a clear political implication. A pamphlet may be written
either for or against somebody or something, but in essence it is
always a protest.

George Orwell (1948) in British Pamphleteers Volume 1, from
the sixteenth century to the French Revolution

For Orwell, the pamphlet is a polemical provocation. Through the
20thc and beyond, artists have worked and acted provocatively and
polemically with text, images and performance, publishing writings
and producing pamphlets and manifestoes, including the Futurists
(1909), Surrealists (1924), Fluxus (George Maciunas, 1963),
First Things First (Ken Garland 1964), Mierle Laderman
Ukeles (Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969) and Stewart
Home’s Neoist Manifestos (1987). More recently, in 2009,
Monica Ross and fifteen others co-recited the Universal
Declaration ofHuman Rights on the Anniversary
of The Peterloo Massacre at John Rylands Library Manchester and the
Freee Art Collective have performed their manifestoes in a
range of public settings. The edited book (2011) by Danchev 100
Artists' Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists
(Penguin Modern Classics) demonstrates it as subject of current
interest.

The last decade has seen art’s increasing engagement with
political and social issues, whereby in some instances artists’
activities have become indistinguishable from social activism (e.g.
Wochenklauser) or other disciplinary functions (e.g.
artist as ‘anthropologist’ as in Jeremy Deller’s Folk
Archive).The art community’s current preoccupation with
revolutionary movements and global politics is being addressed from
different perspectives. The format and traditions of the ‘radical
pamphlet’ may provide an alternative platform for artistic
intervention and provocation.

People’s History Museum (PHM)

The People’s History Museum is a national
research facility, archive and accredited public museum, which
contains unique collections of documents and artefacts. The
collection includes the British Labour Party and Communist Party of
Great Britain papers, extensive amateur and documentary film
holdings and the largest trade union and protest banner collection
in the world. The Museum suits our particular brief of radicality
in its focus on histories of radical collective action.

The project will extend invitation to a range of social groups
in Manchester, for example: Manchester Social Centre, All FM
Community Radio,Manchester Radical History Collective,
Radical Routes network of co-operatives, Working Class Movement
Library, Manchester, Centre for Research in Socio-Cultural
Change, University of Manchester.

RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt(RaRa)

The RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt(RaRa) project was initiated in
2009 at Loughborough University (LU) under the auspices of the
Politicized Practice Research Group (PPRG). The
RaRa project and its associated book series (with I.B.
Tauris) explores the meeting of contemporary art practice and
interpretations of radicality to promote debate, confront
convention and formulate alternative ways of thinking about art
practice. Previous RaRa events have included ‘DIY cultures’ and
Radical Footage: Film and Dissent at Nottingham
Contemporary.

I have recently returned home after spending a week with
Grizedale Arts in the Lake District. The week was highly enjoyable
and a unique experience. From the first day I spent my time working
on a range of tasks, such as feeding the pigs/geese, cutting down
holly for the Christmas decorations and cooking apple pies for a
village meal. A less successful task was my attempt at unblocking a
drain in an icy puddle which confirmed my fears that my southern
roots where not made of tougher stuff! Informing friends of my
recent activities, there seemed to be a consenting confusion and an
asking of ‘Why? ‘. My answer, which I can say more confidently in
retrospect of my stay, was ‘Why not’.

Art comes in many different shapes, sizes and pretentious prices
and thus Grizedale comes as a refreshing change as an organization
that is concerned with the little things that help a community
sustain and grow, as well as maintaining a respected presence in
the big, bad art world.

I left Grizedale with a clearer and stronger understanding of
art’s relationship with society, however my plumbing skills, sadly
are yet to be improved.

Tania and Fernando table talk

We had a recent visit here from useful artist Tania Bruguera who is working on
a Museum of Useful Art for the Van Abbe Museum in October next
year, part of the project The Uses of Art: the Legacy of 1848
and 1989 we have been developing with the Internationale
group of European museums. We spent the weekend with Nick Aikens, a
ginger curator of the Van Abbe Museum, refining the criteria of
Useful Art or Art Util as she prefers to call it. Whilst here we
hooked her up with the Fernando Garcia Dory, awarded last month
with $25,000 and the gong for The
Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change at the
Creative Time Summit in New York. Fernando and Tania only ever
communicate via Skype, the preferred medium of purposeful artists.
Here you see them head to head in a feed back loop of social
engagement. Fernando is currently working in London on Now I Gotta Reason, go
use him.

To be arte útil it
should:

1- Propose new uses
for art within society

2- Challenge the
field within which it operates (civic, legislative, pedagogical,
scientific, economic etc)

5 Comments

Example of an earlier call for useful art and reorientation from Ken Garland... (excerpt from Wikipedia:)

In November 1963 Garland authored the First Things First manifesto which advocated "in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication" over the increasing overuse of design talent in advertising.

...we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise. We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on. There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids, films, television features, scientific and industrial publications and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater awareness of the world. ..."
—Ken Garland, First Things First, 1964.
The manifesto was signed by 21 others. In January 1964, the manifesto was reprinted by Tony Benn in his column in The Guardian. As a result, Garland was invited onto the BBC to read a section of the manifesto. The manifesto was subsequently reprinted by many design publications in Britain and later internationally.

Are they working?

The show at the Jerwood
Space opened for business yesterday. Co-curated with Marcus
Coates, the premise of the show is looking at ways in which art,
artists and culture can play a more useful role in society. The
main discussion so far seems to be about money and in particular
the artist and their unpaid or unvalued labour. As we will be
making the budget spend transparent and encouraging the artists to
think about generating income through their activity, money talk is
no surprise so we will see where these discussions take us in the
coming weeks.

Not really, he doesn't exist. However, we could really do with
some help bringing special seasonal art cheer to our local village.
From making Christmas decorations, serving mulled wine at the
Christmas Lights Switch On to offering a gift wrapping service at
the Farmer's Market and Art Fair, you can use your creative skills
in lots of useful ways. For more information, email Maria.